Addis Ababa fact-finding mission rides Rea Vaya

Details

26 February 2016

An Ethiopian delegation gets their first BRT experience with a Rea Vaya tour to Soweto - and is impressed with what they see. Elias Nkabinde reports.

Lisa Seftel, the City's Executive Director of Transport, briefs members of the delegation on the benefits of BRT.ABOVE: Lisa Seftel greets Yishaq Girmay, Addis Ababa's Deputy Mayor for Good Governance and Reform. (Seife Fekade, quoted below, stands to her left in the first photo, to her right in the second). (Photos by Elias Nkabinde)

An official delegation from Ethiopia's capital city got their first experience of bus rapid transit (BRT) with a Rea Vaya tour of the City's Empire-Perth corridor on Wednesday, 24 February.

The delegation, from the City of Addis Ababa's Organization and Restructuring Project Office, was headed by Addis Ababa's Deputy Mayor for Good Governance and Reform, Yishaq Girmay, and was on a four-day benchmarking visit to Johannesburg that ended on 25 February.

The visit was aimed at exploring how the City of Joburg's governance structures and systems - in particular the Rea Vaya BRT network and the Corridors of Freedom programme - could be adapted for use in Addis Ababa, which has a population of over 2.7-million.

Wednesday's Rea Vaya tour was led by Lisa Seftel, the City's Executive Director of Transport, supported by Lwazi Sikiti, Development Facilitator Manager at the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), which is overseeing the infrastructure roll-out for the Corridors programme.

The delegation was taken along various Rea Vaya routes between the CBD and Soweto, while being given an overview of the benefits of BRT, the stages and milestones of Rea Vaya's rollout to date, and the challenges the system continues to evolve in order to overcome.

Seftel explained how the emerging Corridors of Freedom programme is using transit-oriented development (TOD) in order to overcome the spatial legacy of apartheid, thereby opening access to opportunities for all the people of Johannesburg.

Rea Vaya's innovations, impact impress

Yishaq Girmay, Addis Ababa's Deputy Mayor for Good Governance and Reform, takes in the view during his Rea Vaya tour. (Photo by Elias Nkabinde)

Seife Fekade, a general manager in Addis Ababa's Organization and Restructuring Project Office, said he was "very happy in attaining some knowledge that could apply to Addis Ababa City, which is currently in a restructuring process".

Seeing how transportation innovations were making a difference in Johannesburg was extremely useful, Fekade added. "Transport is one of our strategic concerns through this restructuring phase."

He was particularly impressed with how Rea Vaya, in a relatively short period of time, had "already proven to very comprehensive, having a multiple effect in changing the society of Johannesburg not only in transportation aspects but also with regard to maintaining a social, liveable society regardless of income class".

The creation of dedicated bus lanes "reduces carbon emissions, removes the hassle of traffic jams and makes for a systematic and comfortable form of transport," Fekade said, while for a visitor like himself, Rea Vaya "uses routes that will take you into different types of places like the inner city, where you get to see Johannesburg's skyscrapers, and places like Soweto, where you get to see the stadiums and Mandela's house.

"BRT is definitely one of the interventions we plan on implementing in our city," he concluded.

'I am sure we will continue sharing ideas'

The tour group lines up for a photo outside Orlando Stadium in Soweto - CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE. (Photo by Elias Nkabinde)

Speaking after the tour, Seftel said the City was delighted to have hosted Addis Ababa's delegation, as it had allowed both parties to exchange ideas on the ways in which cities are best governed.

The Rea Vaya BRT tour, Seftel added, was especially insightful for the delegation. "We managed to see a lot of the programmes, infrastructure developments and attractions that form part of the Corridors."

One of the delegates, she said, had commented that the City's BRT network and other Corridors of Freedom infrastructure could last a long time into the future, "and that for me is a very important lesson of sustainability".

The JDA's Lwazi Sikiti was satisfied that the tour had gone off well.

"I was pleased that the delegation had the opportunity to see some of the work we have been undertaking", Sikiti said. "I am sure that they will take with them several principles we are putting in place, especially the Corridors of Freedom and transit-oriented development (TOD) programmes.